Mount Athos, a spectacularly beautiful rocky peninsula on the coast of Greece has been a monastic preserve since the ninth century. This richly illustrated book tells the entire story of Athos, the Holy Mountain, from the first anchorite monks who lived in caves and huts through centuries of political and religious controversy to the thriving monastic communities of today.
For more than one thousand years the monastic republic of Mount Athos has been one of the most chronicled and yet least accessible places in the Mediterranean. Difficult to reach until the last century and strictly restricted to male visitors only, the Holy Mountain of Orthodoxy has been known in the Eastern Christian world and in western Europe more through representation than through direct experience. Most writing on Athos has focused on its Byzantine history and sacred heritage. Imagining Mount Athos uncovers a set of alternative and largely unexplored perspectives, equally important in the mapping and dissemination of Athos in popular imagination. The author considers Mount Athos as the site of pre-Christian myths of Renaissance and Enlightenment scholarship, of shelter for Allied refugees during the Second World War, and of a botanical and sociological laboratory for early-twentieth-century scientists. Each chapter considers a different narrative channel through which Athos has entered Orthodox and western European imagination: the mythical, the utopian, the sacred, the scholarly, the geopolitical, and the scientific. Della Dora has assembled a wealth of unique textual, visual, and oral materials without ever having had the opportunity to visit this holy place. In this sense, in addition to making an important contribution to existing scholarship on Mount Athos, the book adds to current theoretical debates in cultural geography and humanities generally about the circulation of knowledge. Imagining Mount Athos's appeal is international and spans Hellenic studies, cultural geography, environmental history, cultural history, religious studies, history of cartography, and art history. The book will be of interest to scholars as well as to a general audience interested in this unique place and its fascinating history.
Mount Athos was the most famous center of Byzantine monasticism and remains the spiritual heart of the Orthodox Church today. Holy Men of Mount Athos presents the Lives of five holy men who lived there at different times, from the ninth century to the last decades of the Byzantine period in the early fifteenth century.
Discover the rich spirituality of monastic life on Mount Athos--a place like no other on earth. Twenty-five years ago, M. Basil Pennington, OCSO, was the first Western monk to live on Mount Athos for more than the usually permitted overnight visit. The Monks of Mount Athos chronicles his extraordinary stay, his experiences of the East, and lively conversations with his hosts about theological differences and unfamiliar spiritual practices. Listen in as Abbot Basil wrestles with historical differences between Christianity's East and West, learns the Orthodox practice of "the prayer of the heart," and explores the landscape, the monastic communities, and the food of Athos--a monastic republic like no other place on earth. New to this edition, Archimandrite Dionysios, a monk from "the Holy Mountain," reflects on the ecumenical openness fostered as a result of, and since, Abbot Basil's stay. The abbot's experiences on Mount Athos motivated him to re-examine his role as a monk and his relationship to God. His inspiring meditations will help you to explore your own relationship to God and to others.
The Aegean Sea laps the shores of the Holy Mountain of Athos, a self-governing monastic republic on a peninsula in Northern Greece. Twenty ruling monasteries comprise the republic; one of those is the monastery of St Panteleimon, where services are conducted in Slavonic. It has become known as the Russian monastery on Mt. Athos.St Panteleimon, fully restored in recent years, can accommodate up to 5,000 men, reflecting the scale of the settlement at its apogee in the nineteenth century, prior to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 it has experienced a strong revival and is now one of the most numerous of the twenty. The vast buildings and its sketes and dependencies seen today are really only a reflection of the history of the past two centuries.In this first comprehensive account of the monastery in the English language, that stretches back more than one thousand years, Nicholas Fennell has drawn from previously inaccessible archival materials in gathering the wealth of information he shares in these pages. The history of the community is seen to interact with the wider worlds of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires and the modern nation state of Greece, together with that of a Russian homeland whose political character is constantly evolving. It covers the distinct phases in this history: From the tenth to the twelfth centuries when Russian Athonites inhabited the ancient Russian Lavra of the Mother of God, known as Xylourgou; through the six hundred years from the mid-twelfth to the mid-eighteenth century, when the monastery of St Panteleimon was commonly referred to as Nagorny or Old Mountain Rusik; and into the most recent 250 years with their fluctuating fortunes and the questioning of its ethnic identity. Themes explored include the Pan-Orthodox ideal, the role of money and political pressure, sanctity and heroism in adversity, ethnic relations, and the importance of historical memory and precedent.
An acclaimed expert in Christian mysticism travels to a monastery high in the Trodos Mountains of Cyprus and offers a fascinating look at the Greek Orthodox approach to spirituality that will appeal to readers of Carlos Castaneda. In an engaging combination of dialogues, reflections, conversations, history, and travel information, Kyriacos C. Markides continues the exploration of a spiritual tradition and practice little known in the West he began in Riding with the Lion. His earlier book took readers to the isolated peninsula of Mount Athos in northern Greece and into the group of ancient monasteries. There, in what might be called a “Christian Tibet,” two thousand monks and hermits practice the spiritual arts to attain a oneness with God. In his new book, Markides follows Father Maximos, one of Mount Athos’s monks, to the troubled island of Cyprus. As Father Maximos establishes churches, convents, and monasteries in this deeply divided land, Markides is awakened anew to the magnificent spirituality of the Greek Orthodox Church. Images of the land and the people of Cyprus and details of its tragic history enrich the Mountain of Silence. Like the writings of Castaneda, the book brilliantly evokes the confluence of an inner and outer journey. The depth and richness of its spiritual message echo the thoughts and writings of Saint Francis of Assisi and other great saints of the Church as well. The result is a remarkable work–a moving, profoundly human examination of the role and the power of spirituality in a complex and confusing world.
An affectionate testament to Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain, after 30 years of activity of the Friends of Mount Athos00Mount Athos, the home of Orthodox spirituality and monasticism, has been in existence for at least 1200 years. Home to over 2,000 monks, in twenty glorious monasteries filled with treasures, the peninsular is undergoing a transformation and renewal of faith.00In 1956 there was a proposal to build hotels on Mount Athos. Today it hosts up to 1,000 pilgrims every day! Why? This book will help explain this extraordinary place, the current resurgence, the growing population of monks, the sense of purpose, the love and affection that are so much part of the environment.00This wonderful story, with a preface by HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, is told through the recollections of the Friends of Mount Athos, an organisation that has, for thirty years, provided support for the institutions, landscape and people. Here are the stories of enchantment from over forty people of different nationalities, customs and beliefs.00In addition to the text, there are a collection of special photographs and maps.00Peter Howorth and Chris Thomas are long time members of the Friends of Mount Athos and veterans of multiple path-clearing pilgrimages to the Holy Mountain which is how they met. Despite living on opposite sides of the planet, their mutual passion for the planet, geography, pilgrimage and of course Mount Athos has underpinned their collaboration.
The papers in this volume derive from the 28th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held for the Society for the promotion of Byzantine Studies at the Univesity of Birmingham in March 1994. Virtually from the time of their first foundation, the monastic communities of Mt Athos assumed a central position in the world of Orthodox Christianity. The spiritual, and political and economic influence of the Holy Mountain soon transcended the boundaries of the Byzantine empire within which it lay, to take on a supra-national importance and become one of the pillars of Orthodoxy after the fall of the empire. For the historian, the significance of Mt Athos is enhanced by the fact that its archives contain the most substanial body of Byzantine documentation to have survived the Middle Ages, and its libraries, treasuries and buildings have preserved much that has elsewhere been lost. These archives are now largely edited, and investigation of the art and archaeology is yielding substantial evidence. The papers in this volume, by an international set of scholars, embody the fruits of this research. Starting from Athos itself, they embrace the whole phenomenon of Byzantine monasticism, dealing with questions of asceticism, authority, community, economy, enlightenment, fortification, hesychasm, liturgy, manuscripts, music, patronage, scandal, spirituality, and women (to take an alphabetical sample). Together these papers provide a coherent and immediate view of scholarship in the field.
